keep the sisterhood in subjection; and at last it is a positive relief to the mind to read of the death of the good and gentle Naomi. We saw the sad spectacle of the reception of a sister in the beginning of the poem; we see the conclusion of the strange eventless history in the last lines. Naomi is dying. Naomi the ardent Creole the crushed enthusiastthe hospital nurse-the dignified abbess the poor and broken in heart-is dressed in coarse sackcloth, when death draws near, and listens for the last time to the chanted service for the dying, and inhales for the last time the odour of incense. Some thought whether arising from the past or the future-throws a momentary glow on those withered features And all at once unto that gentle face (Pale reflex of her long forgotten grace), A bloom returned; and thus her spirit passed, As if she smiled to reach repose at last! Shrieks rose, and cries that an indulgent Heaven, In that last smile, miraculous aid had given. A saint, the sisters cried, and clutched with care Shreds of her dress, locks of her snowy hair, And all that touched the holy Naomi. And midst the clamour there at peace lay she! They laid her fondly in her narrow bedThe psalm was sung, the parting prayer was said, Beneath the churchyard trees a grave she found, And sleeps unknown beneath the grassy mound. FAMILY HISTORY. WE are a very patient race, we British people. To tell plain truth, we receive abuse with a certain complacency, and are never better pleased with our Mentors than when they set us down in the abstract-as guilty of all the faults and meannesses under the skies. We are always glad to make the most of our national foibles, and the man who denounces his fellows boldly, and with just a little discretion, is your true popular orator. In pursuance of this characteristic tendency, we have very generally given in to the idea that we are the greatest snobs in Christendom, holding our title as something half divine; yet this is by no means the fact, though a great many people say it; and Mr Thackeray draws a very unphilosophical conclusion when he makes out his verdict after this sweeping fashion. We are not snobs-pure snobbishness is a vice of "society," and "society" is a plague almost exclusively belonging to London. Yet even in town, and even among people who love peerages, and read with relish the column of fashionable intelligence, the pervading spirit, we are bold to assert, is not the spirit of a snob. Larger, warmer, more human, most admirable satirist, is the curiosity which inspires our breast. Do you suppose we would not be very much more edified could we ascertain all about the family, income, prospects, and connections of Mr Jones next door, than by all our scraps of information concerning the Right Honourable Earl or the noble Marquess? But unfortunately, after all due and legitimate exertions, we are obliged to confess that we know nothing about Mr Jones, who his wife was, and who his visitors are, and what were those parties in which he was wont to recreate himself during the season, disturbing our sober slumbers by the noise of his returneven where he has gone to now, when the season is over, and he has closed up all his shutters;-all these things are a secret and a mystery beyond the reach of finding out, and neither blue book, nor red book, nor Post-office Directory, can give us any information more satisfactory than that his name is Robert instead of John. Then that gay old couple over the way, who also have closed up their shutters, but who, to the evident testimony of our eyes and observation, have not gone out of town-what are they doing over there in their dark drawing-room, these ancient, festive, kindly old people, who look so gay in their childless solitude? Why don't they go out of town? and wherefore make believe that they do? If we could but be satisfied on these points, do you think we would take the trouble to concern ourselves about the princely movements of Sutherland House or Belgrave Square? It is our own fate to dwell in a neighbourhood of the intensest respectability. When we take our humble mid-day walk (not now, dearest reader-only, we beg you to observe, at the proper season when it is proper to be in town), amusing and amazing it is to mark that procession of most comfortable broughams, with their quiet liveries and sleek brown horses, turning out of all the mysterious back regions in an uninterrupted line. But who is about to drive out in these respectable vehicles, who it is who drives a pair, who rejoices in the greys, and disturbs the sobre atmosphere of quiet wealth with liveries white and red, that, alas! unless we devoted our life to the inquiry, we must never hope to know. Even those Croydon baskets full of children, trundling along on their low wheels with the quiet pony which mamma can manage, and the blue-coated man, evident major-domo and family man-of-all-work, hanging on, a sad overbalance, behind, puzzle and defeat all our inquiries. Our excellent neighbours wrap themselves up in the impervious veil of respectability. There is no getting at them save by introductions and" mutual friends," morning calls and evening parties. No safety-valve remains for our most natural, laudable, and human curiosity, yet we remain curious notwithstanding, and what can we do but turn to the only possible gossiping within our reach? It is hopeless to ascertain what watering-place is graced by the presence of Mrs Jones, but we can find out where the Countess of Gaunt has established her autumnal retirement, and a good deal about her amusements and occupations, and who has joined her "distinguished circle," not to speak of a glance by the way into the private affairs of Lady Arabella and Lord Charles. We repeat, we are not snobs, but with candour we confess that we love an "interior," and rejoice in a chance glimpse within doors, be it of a cottage kitchen bright with firelight, or a wayside parlour where the candles are being lighted, and before the attendant John or Mary has drawn down the blinds. There is no benevolent Asmodeus to open for us the houses of our neighbours, no charitable Burke to let us in, in kindly sympathy, to the family history of the excellent people next door and over the way. And if we console ourselves with a stray glance now and then into the domestic concerns of those greater folk who are accustomed to be looked at, and who feel themselves a proper and laudable object of curiosity to all the world, are we for that innocent reason to be elevated to the pillory of Mr Thackeray? No! We love gossip, we confess. We do not love the man who does not love gossip, we are bound to acknowledge, in general, and as a matter of taste we prefer talking about our neighbours to any more abstract discussion, and we are decidedly of opinion that it is better to look in at the palace windows than to give up the chance of any "interior" at all. old-world wisdom, learning, simplicity, and foolishness of tender family affection-family courage, honour, wit, and nobleness, seldom equalled, and nowhere to be surpassed. Family history, come at it how you will-yes, dearest reader, if it be even in the way of gossip, history which is in the making, the story of to-day, is one of the most delightful of all studies-stranger, quainter, more out of the way and unusual than all the inventions of fictions-full of real vicissitudes and actual providences more wonderful than the wildest chances of romances, and varieties of human thought and feeling, which the greatest imagination in the world could not devise. Which of us is there who has not smiled aside at those expedients of the story-teller which we ourselves were the first to condemn as against probability, while we yet remembered well how much stranger and less probable were the real turning-points of our own or of our brother's fate. But we cannot carry our story to the world for its instant conviction-that world which in its secret heart is as conscious of the truth as we are. The household history lies buried under mountain weights of love and pity and tenderness, and the bravest hearts of the domestic circle hide their own heroisms and sufferings more jealously than crimes. The heartbreak of the mother, were it known, might leave a blight on the good fame of the child-the self-sacrifice of one brother, were it told aloud, might show only too clearly the self-seeking of another, and the family heroes hold their peace, and the family historians daro not speak We say again and again every one, that truth is strange than fiction no man among u ventures to him how he know tion-Grisell Baillie, born a Hume of Polwarth, and her husband, Baillie of Jerviswood. The instant association which suggested to our own mind at sight of this tiny volume the larger and more important work of Lord Lindsay,* requires no explanation. Lord Lindsay's book, though it bears ballast of heavier metal, is, in its most delightful episode, so much akin and alike to the modest production of the younger Grisell Baillie, that we glance instinctively from the one to the other as kindred portraits fitly placed together. We have no excuse of novelty-not even the apology of a new edition-to justify us in any attempt at a critical review of these works, nor have we any such intention; but we are perfectly assured that many a reader, tired at once of story-telling and philosophy-of the marks which veil the face of the present time, and of the sad attempts it makes at self-elucidation-will be glad to glance back with us, even though it be into the eighteenth century, into those hearts and homes of antique fashion, whose simplicity neither family pride, old-world etiquette, conscious rank, nor half-conscious genius could lessen or destroy. First of all, and to begin with, let us state our conviction--which conviction we cast boldly a glove of defiance in the face Sir A. Alison, Mr Macaulay, Mr Hallam, Earl Stanhope-all and sundry the historians of the day. They do very well in their own way, and within their own standing-ground, these accomplished gentlemen, but your true domestic chronicler, your real historian of homes and manners-let nobody deny it is a woman. Lindsay, though few men write better, and though his archaic knowledge and amount of study was, we have no doubt, tenfold greater than her ladyship's, is fairly worsted and beaten within the pages of his own book by that Lady Anne, to whose melodious title we are not disposed to add any surname the Lady Anne of Auld Robin Gray; and we have no esteem for the man who would not throw aside the most brilliant pictorial sketch of the most popular of writers Lord for Lady Murray's picture of her mother-so noble, so unaffected, so tender and true. A series of such pictures-and many such, we do not doubt, exist unrevealed in family records and private memoirs-would do more to expound the real character of a country-above all of such a country as Scotland-than all the statistical accounts, and all the political movements in the world. It would almost seem as if the Scottish female character-no disparagement to maiden or to matron in the earlier stages of development and effloresced into its fullest bloom and beauty in the old lady. Who does not know, or has not known, some living example of that fair old age-so fresh, so sweet, so pure-of which Lady Murray says, "She was middle-sized, well made, clever (Anglicè, active) in her person, very handsome, with a life and sweetness in her eyes very uncommon to her last had the finest complexion, with the clearest red in her cheeks and lips that could be seen in one of fifteen?" Eyes as dewy and as bright as the eyes of youth, cheeks as soft in their sweet wrinkles as the cheek of a child, the silver-white hair a crown of glory, and every touch of age a touch of tenderness. Who does not recall some such figure as this, some one in whose presence every man who had ever loved the name instinctively thought upon the mother of his own heart? It would be easy to enlarge the picture: the "kindly Scots," idiomatic and expressive, refined out of all vulgarness --the withered shapely hands, whose touch of kindness was like a blessing the breath of arbitrariness and authority, the tone sometimes a little peremptory and dominant-the habit of rule which gave precision and individuality to the character, and preserved it from the bland perfection of mere love and gentleness. Is the race fading out of the world it blessed and brightened? or is it only our own ideal and exemplar of one, that we fear to look for the kindred face which might remind us too sadly of all that we had lost? And th unwedded ladies *Lives of the Lind of the same period and kind; those whom it was the interest of the world to keep unwedded such friends, counsellors, and aids they were, nearer than kindred. Old ladies, sometimes with harsh enough angularities of character, sometimes very plain in speech, yet somehow preserving about them a certain subtle bloom of maidenhood, the hidden delicate atmosphere in which they carried safe into old age the purified romance of youth are there any such old maids now as Doctor Anne Keith, the Mrs Martha Bethune Balliol of the Chronicles of the Canongate? We do not know; but we can still come at her veritable presence-and still enter the company where the old Countess of Balcarras smiles to tell how at ninety every one compliments her on her good looks, thanks to the intermediate agency of Lord Lindsay. We do not know whether these domestic records move other readers as they do ourselves; but for our part, we confess our heart warms to the tale, and we are not only proud of the blood and the nation which produces this vision and reality of good women, but cannot help identifying our mothercountry herself, Scotland-noble, homelike, and kindly, with such names as those of the Ladies of Balcarras, of Anne Keith, and of Grisell Hume. There is little opportunity nowadays, so far at least as the world knows, for the valour and the selfcommand, the ready wit, the entire devotion and self-sacrifice, the desperate expedients and the agonies of endurance, by which times of revolution and great public vicissitude developed the greatest faculties in the tenderest heart Our energies are no longer ta the utmost to conceal the 1 ce or aid the flight of our riends. We are no longer 1, and no longer under t ion of using oppression onst in any publ + course of m irbreadth e al powers gencies safety. The shock of distant battle, the concussion of great events, do not affect as first causes our daily life. A sudden edict of supreme authority can no longer make us fugitives, or set a price upon our heads. These are great blessings; yet, perhaps, while we fully appreciate these, we do not at the same time quite understand what a noble culture that was, and how danger, poverty, and exile, the heroic uses of adversity, quickened the intellect and strengthened the character of even the secondary personages who had share in them. The eighteenth century certainly was no great result to be elaborated out of the struggles and sufferings of the preceding age; yet, debased in art and poor in literature, the beginning of this eighteenth century was, notwithstanding, as wealthy in character as any age of history. Individual faces, most distinct and recognisable, brighten through the haze on every hand. There was little genius in the high places; but there were great powers, great individuality, a very remarkable number of able people, capable of distinction themselves, and most worthy of awarding it, in the grades below. We have little to do with London and its brilliant gossipy collection of coteries, where society, if a little more piquant and original, and a good deal less innocent, was at least as false as society is now. That this period should have attracted the special favour and attention of two of the most brilliant "wits" of our own day, Macaulay and Thackeray, is an odd enough testimonial in its favour. But in Edinburgh, and in such hereditary houses as that castle which Lady Anne Lindsay, with a touch of the prevailing mannerism of the day, delights to call the chateau of Balcarras, we recognise with delight not only the fulness and variety of character which disting es the larger world, but with man fa quainter old-world simplicit individual and more simpler, a standand evid the old |